vendredi, mars 23, 2007

Today was the day that all of the spring quarter students arrived at the residences. Although things went more smoothly than the last few times, it nonetheless ate up my entire day. The building staff had developed a system where they would call me on my cell as they finished checking-in a new batch of students. They would give me their room numbers and then I would go and meet them in their rooms to take care of the various "welcome" rituals. Unlike in past instances, the students arrives at 30 minute intervals all day, which meant that I never had more than 30 minutes of continuous undisturbed time to do my own work.

Nonetheless, the day went well and everybody got settled in. The students had the luck of arriving on a Friday, which meant that we have all weekend to take care of the mandatory tour of the building, neighbourhood, and the purchase of métro passes.

The rest of my day was pretty unexciting. I was planning on going out that evening, but I began to feel pretty crappy toward the end of the day and decided that I needed to take some time off and prepare myself for the coming week (aside from the orientation of the new students, I also have taxes to file, grants to apply for, and 4 visitors coming to see me in 2 weeks).